ABOUT ORIGINS, CREATION, AND EVOLUTION

SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES: 2006-JUL to DEC

Sponsored link.

2006-JUL-05: World: Malaria parasites evolving: Parasites that cause malaria appear to
be evolving. They are developing increasing resistant to the two main drugs
of choice in the treatment of the disease. Research presented at the 15th
World Congress of Pharmacology in Beijing offers hope that a three drug
cocktail may offer a solution, until the parasites evolve further.
1

2006-JUL-10: World: Proposal to build radio telescope to
detect TV: Argentina, Australia, China and South Africa have
submitted proposals to host a Square Kilometer Array (SKA) radio telescope
that would be 50 times more sensitive than existing units. One application
would be to study the formation and evolution of stars and galaxies. Another
might be to detect non-human television or radio transmissions from
elsewhere in the universe. The selection of a final site will take up to two
years. 2

2006-JUL-28: Canada: Ornithopter achieves
flight: This news item has nothing to do with origins but we thought we
would add it because it is such a fascinating accomplishment. Besides, it
was achieved by a team from my Alma Mater, the University of Toronto. A UofT
news item reported:

"Professor Emeritus James DeLaurier achieved something in early July
that has fascinated humankind throughout much of history. DeLaurier and a team of students at the University of Toronto
Institute for Aerospace Studies achieved sustained flight by a piloted
ornithopter – an airplane with flapping wings that are mechanically
operated – something dreamed of by Leonardo da Vinci, among others. 'He though about it carefully,' said DeLaurier of da Vinci’s design
for an ornithopter. 'He put a remarkable amount of thought into it but
was limited by the materials of his time'." 3

The plane flew for 14 seconds at an average
speed of 88 km/hr (55 miles/hr) over a third of a kilometer (360 yards).

2006-AUG-17: USA: Scientists find brain evolution gene: One of
the real puzzles facing scientists specializing in the study of evolution of
species is why the brains of our ancestors evolved so quickly as a
chimp-like species evolved into humans. Over a "short" interval of only a
few million years, one tiny part of the human genome appears to have evolved
about 70 times faster than the rest of our genetic code. This gene was
partly responsible for the tripling of the size of the cerebral cortex --
the part of the brain responsible for language, information processing and
other complex functions. The gene, called HAR1F, did not exist until 300
million years ago, and is present only in mammals and birds. Scientists at
the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering at the
University of California, Santa Cruz, found 18 differences in that one
gene between humans and chimpanzees. "...scientists still don't know
specifically what the gene does. But they know that this same gene turns on
in human fetuses at seven weeks after conception and then shuts down at 19
weeks..." 4

2006-AUG-24: Czech Republic: The
International Astronomical Union has determined that Pluto is not the
ninth planet after all. It has been considered to be a planet since was
discovered in 1930. The new definition of a planet is: "a celestial body
that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to
overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and
has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit." Pluto does not meet the
final criterion because it has an oblong orbit that overlaps with Neptune.
Two new classes of objects have now been created: "dwarf planets," and "small solar system bodies" such as asteroids, comets, etc.
Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet, along with
the asteroid Ceres and Xena, formally known as 2003 UB313. 5,6

2006-SEP-20: Ethiopia: Skeleton of transition
fossil found: A remarkably complete skeleton of a three-year-old female
member of the Australopithecus afarensis family was found in the year 2000.
Scientists have spent five years removing the bones from the sandstone in which
it was embedded; the task will take years more. The skeleton is between 3 and 4
millions of years old. Her lower body is very human-like; her upper body is
ape-like. Bernard Wood of George Washington University, wrote that the discovery
provides "a veritable mine of information about a crucial stage in human
evolutionary history." 7

2006-OCT-11: Spain: Earth wobbles may be
related to mammalian extinctions: Scientists studying rodent fossils in
Spain found that mammals and some other species tend to go extinct at
regular intervals. New species develop later. Their analysis of this
"turnover" rate shows a complex pattern composed of two cycles. One cycle
appears related to a 2.5 million year variation in the shape of the earth's
orbit. The other cycle is related to a 1 million year variation in the
earth's tilt. Both cycles cause an increase in the ice-sheet, general
cooling and altered precipitation patterns. 8

2006-OCT-30: Romania: Evidence that humans
and Neanderthals may have mated: Scientists generally agree that
anatomically modern humans entered Europe about 40 to 50 thousand years ago.
Some ten or twenty thousand years later, the Neanderthals vanished.
Scientists have been uncertain whether the humans wiped out the Neanderthals
or mated with them and thus absorbed them into their population -- or both.

Erik Trinkaus of Washington University and team analyzed early modern human
bones from a cave in Romania known as Pestera Muierii, or "Cave of the Old
Woman."

Neanderthal
skulls (upper example) can be instantly differentiated from an early modern
human skulls (bottom example) by the presence of a heavy brow ridge. A more
subtle difference is the arc of the brain cage. There are many body features
that show differences as well.

"These earliest modern humans had a mosaic of distinctly modern human
characteristics and other characteristics which align them with
Neanderthals, suggesting some combination of modern humans dispersing
into Europe and interacting with and adsorbing the Neanderthal
population."

The fossils show modern human features such as a narrow nose, and a small
upper jawbone, small front teeth and brow ridge. But they also showed
features common to Neanderthals.

The final resolution of the question awaits the reconstruction of the
Neanderthal genome. That project is underway. 9

2006-NOV-16: Neanderthal DNA partly
sequenced: A team led by Edward Rubin, at the Genomics Division
ofthe Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, CA,
extracted DNA from the thigh bone of a 38,000 year-old male Neanderthal who
lived near what is now Vindija in Croatia. They recovered 65,250 base pairs
of DNA from a total of about 3 million which formed the full genome. They
found that the Neanderthal genome were at least 99.5% identical to our own.
Their analysis showed that the Neanderthals and modern humans shared a
common ancestor who lived about 706,000 years ago. This is when the two
lineages began to diverge. However, the final split between the two
hominoids happened about 400,000 years later. They coexisted in parts of
Europe and western Asia until the Neanderthals died out some 30,000 years
ago. 10

References used:

The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above
essay. The hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.